About Us

Mark Stein, Lilith Christiansen, and Sarah Hagerman are management consultants who oversee Kaiser Associates’ Organization Development (OD) practice. The practice brings a deep analytical rigor and business performance perspective to helping leading companies succeed against organizational development challenges.

Kaiser’s OD practice is recognized as one of the very first, if not the first, management consulting firm to develop a specialty in onboarding. This practice has been conducting primary research, and developing systemic and strategic solutions for large-scale deployment since 2006. The frameworks explained in Stein and Christiansen’s Successful Onboarding book, are the direct result of 4 years of deep research and client program development work in this space.

Kaiser’s OD client base is composed of renowned global corporations, including several of the largest professional service-consulting firms and firms in the Retail, Industrial, Energy, Healthcare, Financial Service, Aerospace and Defense, Technology, and Media and Entertainment industries.

Mark Stein

With a finance education from the George Washington University School of Business in 1990, and subsequent professional service experience as a foundation, Mark entered the management consulting industry in 1995, and has since led hundreds of corporate strategy, investment analysis and organization development engagements for leading multi-national corporations. Mark speaks at Organization Development and onboarding conferences. He is married with three daughters, and lives in Bethesda, MD.

Lillith Christiansen

Lilith Christiansen has 15 years of organization development consulting experience with Kaiser Associates and Booz Allen Hamilton. Lilith has led numerous organizational improvement and employee programs redesign projects for clients in both public and private sectors. Lilith is a graduate of University of Virginia and University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. Lilith is married, has a son and a daughter, and lives in Arlington, VA.

Sarah Hagerman

Sarah has 8 years of organization development consulting experience with Kaiser Associates. Her specific areas of expertise include Onboarding, Organizational Design and Effectiveness, Culture Assessments, Workforce Analytics, Business Process Reengineering, Change Management, and Benchmarking across a wide variety of industries. Sarah is graduate of Tufts University and holds a MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

About Kaiser Associates

Founded in 1981, Kaiser Associates is an international strategy and management-consulting firm that serves as a key advisor to the world’s leading companies. Kaiser provides its clients with the unique insight to drive critical decision-making and solve their most pressing problems. Kaiser is dedicated to helping leading corporations improve their performance and achieve sustained profitable growth.

Kaiser Associates’ Organization Development (OD) practice is focused on helping clients align business strategy with processes, structure and the personal objectives and interests of their people. Our practice believes that the needs of the enterprise and those of its people are inherently the same: to learn, advance, take calculated risks and reap the rewards, and to uncover fertile ground for growth. By working in the seams between People, Processes, Performance and Outcomes, Kaiser’s Organization Development teams ensure that an organization’s system is optimized to support the business strategy and deliver necessary results.

Kaiser’s OD Practice: Analytical rigor and design making the complex clear. Driving progress in line with business strategy

Kaiser’s onboarding work starts with enterprise and system diagnostic, and then includes program design architecture, program development, implementation, change management, performance measurement and governance.

Kaiser’s onboarding services include:

Program Diagnostics: Program metrics development and in-depth analysis of client onboarding programs to determine key strengths and areas of opportunity relative to client specific conditions and business objectives

Business Case: Development of a business case to help make the case for change — directed at leadership and key actors in the onboarding system

Hiring Manager Guides and Tools: Guides and process flows for hiring managers (and other system participants) to follow from the point of offer acceptance all the way through year one matriculation

Implementation Planning & Support: Tactical plans for aligning program roles and accountabilities, piloting enhanced system elements and ensuring successful implementation. Deployment of governance system including metrics and accountability of all actors in the onboarding system

Kaiser provides end-to-end support across all four of the aforementioned service areas, or targeted support in specific areas.

In addition, Kaiser is often called in to conduct a periodic onboarding program management audit — a version of its diagnostics — to help client teams compare how well their current programs stand up against world class standards, given the unique objectives of the client’s organization.

Contact us for additional insight on Kaiser’s onboarding perspective and the impact of our work.

Buy Now

“Every company leader who is serious about delivering results through people should read this book. Successful Onboarding not only gives a roadmap to successful hiring and retention, but also addresses the common pitfalls that lead to adjustment struggles, discouragement and skepticism from new hires. This book rings true to those of us who coach leaders in the onboarding transition.”